Two Weeks into the Season

A force four cold arrived sometime on Sunday, turning me into a functioning vegetable for a few days but just as quickly as it arrived, it passed. Odd.Anyway, we’ve actually seen some of the new season and I figured it’s time to comment.Gilmore Girls remains strong in both writing and performance. The tension and hurt feelings between mother and daughter is palpable as both cope with their new realities. Rory clearly is not happy with the twists in her life but also seems somewhat lost while Lorelei can’t seem to take pleasure in her engagement since she can’t share it with her daughter. And poor Luke is stuck in the middle but at least is pointing that out rather than letting it fester.I do note the cast has sprawled to the point where we can’t see everyone and their storylines get short shrift. Lane hasn’t turned up at all and Sookie is barely there. If I were the producers, I’d pare things down a bit and given my druthers, I’d start with Luke’s sister and her husband since they are a little too broadly played, especially Michael Deluise.House had a another good outing this week. The medical procedure scenes were a little too much for me. It’s odd, I enjoy medical series but when things get graphic, I squirm. Also, from a timing standpoint, House’s clinic visit and great comical reaction, probably should have been a little later in the story. We’re seeing interesting glimpses of the characters especially the reactions everyone had when Chase admitted to kissing the nine year old.Lost certainly delivered on the promise to show us what was inside the hatch but then spoiled some of the drama by telegraphing who it was via the flashbacks. On one of my mailing lists, it was pointed out the car accident victim shared Shannon’s last name and was likely her father, yet another indication of how their lives were being drawn together over time. I’m sorry the rest of the cast didn’t have much to do but I guess they wanted to focus on Jack and Locke and keep things moving. Not their best hour, certainly not their worst and I’m ready for more.I recently bitched about how disappointingly unreal the characters in Reunion were. I had hoped for a sharply written series to take advantage of the great premise. To be fair, I sampled the second episode last night and have to say, the characters continue to be weak. Very weak. Also, they are heaping more dire twists onto their young lives than most teenagers ever endure, going from dramatic to unbelievable. It’s not enough Sam gives her baby up for adoption, but then she learns she can’t have more children and the parents who adopted her child have vanished. Sheesh. We’re also given very little to go on with what happened to at least two of the characters in the year between episodes. Again, I also complain that the writers do nothing to ground the characters to their era. The music and costuming have to carry the load. Good thing there will be other shows to watch on Thursday nights.A few weeks back, NBC bound a CD-Rom into issues of Entertainment Weekly so I could sample their new series. As a result, I knew I could skip them all. Which disappointed me because I thought E-Ring had promise. And I knew Fathom was going to be NBC’s equivalent of their 1980s smash hit Manimal and the reviews bear that out.In fact, there are few of the new series that I find compelling enough to try. I’ve taped the first ep of How I Met Your Mother because the buzz was good and I’ll see just about anything with Alyson Hannigan. I can skip Threshold despite Carla Gugino and Brent Spiner because, after all, it’s a Brannon Braga production. The others seem potentially interesting but not demanding enough to get me to find the time. And the clips and buzz on The Night Stalker disappoint me no end (which is a shame since a buddy’s got family working on the show and you never want to see people lose their jobs).Speaking of losing their jobs, I’m surprised to see the first cancellation already. After a mere two outings, Fox has pulled Head Cases. It didn’t get great reviews and anything opposite Lost was going to suffer. But apparently, the numbers this week were so poor the network felt it had little choice. We’ll see how many of the other time slot battles work out over the next few weeks.